


Endearing

by f_imaginings



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: And they are cute, M/M, and karkat takes none of kankris shit, in which kankri baffles over karkats fondness for quadro romance novels, romcom satire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:54:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2651114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_imaginings/pseuds/f_imaginings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Here Kankri found himself; in potentially the most incriminating position ever, surrounded by abject filth.</p>
<p>Literary filth."</p>
<p>In which Kankri ponders paperbacks, pornography, and what he really means when he says the word 'endearing'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endearing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lactoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lactoria/gifts).



It’s a little furtive, all this sneaking about. If Kankri were being completely honest with himself, he’d admit it was a downright invasion of privacy. If the ghostly social justice warrior had asked himself a sweep ago if he would ever do anything like this his past self would have laughed uproariously in his face before telling future Kankri exactly how wrong he was in great detail. Yet here Kankri found himself; in potentially the most incriminating position ever, surrounded by abject filth.

Literary filth.

Karkat kept his quadro-romance novels in a chest in the respite block. He had thrown a few of his clothes over the chest in a nonchalant attempt to disguise the contents. It was almost as though he was ashamed to be the Mills and Boon addict that he was. Considering how often Kankri poked fun at his fondness for the books, he would not be surprised if Karkat had covered the chest on purpose, and that notion sent a twinge of guilt through him. It was Karkat’s unapologetic nature, among many of his other traits, that he found so deeply endearing and the very idea that he had inadvertently caused him to quell or hide a part of him had Kankri thinking in guilty circles.

No doubt if Kankri asked Karkat if he felt pressured or ashamed of this particular side of himself Karkat would dissuade his ghostly paramour of the notion, but Kankri had a terrible habit of overthinking  _everything_.

Even poorly written casteist romance novels it seems.

"How could he find this appealing? I mean really, the cliché of the ‘fiery warmblood love interest’ tamed by the heavy handed inclinations of the ‘haughty cool-hued protagonist’ just reeks of casteist agenda, not to mention that must be the thirteenth book in a row I’ve seen it in." Scowling as he set another book aside in the ‘utterly useless’ pile, Kankri pawed through Karkat’s collection, seeking the ever evasive tolerable novel amidst the sea of trite drivel within the chest.

There was a reason for this furtive and unsavoury conduct. Kankri was sure there was a reason, one that wasn’t humiliating or pathetic or even far fetched. However he was sure if anyone asked him what said reason would be, the garbled slew of words he would spurt out in response would fail to elucidate anyone let alone himself.

After encountering the fourth book wherein genetalia was referred to as the geographical “there” Kankri had to pause to remind himself of his reason  _for_ doing this, and he looked to the clothes atop the chest to remind him.

The grey looping symbol on Karkat’s shirt, the cultish representation of a martyrs shackles, would usually fuel Kankri’s ire, but in reference to this particular garment he felt nothing but affection. It was frightening, the depth and breadth of this affection, and often Kankri floundered adrift on this new and unusual feeling.

Sometimes it felt like a weakness, sometimes it felt like obsession, often he wondered if it was healthy, more often he wondered if this is what living feels like and all along he had been existing without purpose.

Karkat.

The young troll who shared his mutant strain swept through his un-life like light, or air. He barrelled through Kankri’s monotonous existence and reminded him of what it was to truly breathe. Seeing his red eyes light up with mischief or amusement or ardour took Kankri’s breath away. Hence why initially Kankri suspected some sort of medical anomaly or aberration.

Feeling felt so foreign to Kankri, emotions like these felt unwieldy and awkward to him at first. Arguably he still managed them with ungainly aplomb, and he thought back, mentally castigating himself for how poorly he handled his feelings for Karkat.

> _You confuse me Karkat. Not necessarily in ways that are bad. I find myself rethinking things I’ve held onto for millennia and doing things I never thought I would and experiencing new experiences with you after so much monotony. And it confuses me, I’m so confused by all of it, I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel._
> 
> _WELL, FOR ONE YOU CAN START BY RECOGNISING THAT YOU LOVE ME. I KNOW YOU DO._

Kankri put his hand to his forehead, the shame from that one conversation following him, in flashback form. They had discussed that particular epiphany, and that had been perhaps several perigrees ago, but there were moments where Kankri cyclically remembered his past embarrassments and berated himself for them, even though the event in question had already passed.

"Stupid." He murmured to himself, sorting through the remaining books in the chest.

Karkat was a romantic, he had grown up on quadro-romance books and films, he believed wholeheartedly in the foursquare of quadrancy, and yet somehow he was still here, tolerating Kankri’s ‘anti-quadrantal’ stance. Kankri feels like if he had been a normal instigator of traditional quadro-romance, perhaps Karkat might have been happier, rather than putting him through whatever non-normative nonsense you currently clung too, but the truth was that Kankri was just greedy. Endlessly greedy and particular, his interactions with Karkat didn’t fit any individual quadrant, and their tendencies for vaccilation kept them both constantly on their toes. Not even touching on Kankri’s jealousy issues. How much he wanted to own every facet of Karkat that he had to give, how possessive and territorial he felt. How this roaring beast inside of him quaked with fury at the thought of Karkat favouring anyone else like he does with Kankri, showing anyone else these precious sides to him, the moments of vulnerability, of passion, of tenderness that he bestows upon Kankri. It eats him up inside.

> _You’re trying to make me jealous just so I can own you._
> 
> _Ugh, you’re so fucking hot when you want to be._

Kankri gives up searching through the plethora of harlequin romance novellas to reach over and grab Karkat’s shirt. The fabric is warm, somewhat thick, made for functionality rather than fashion, and smells ever so subtly of Karkat. Karkat smells of life, and of the ozone of crossing into the dream bubbles, and of instant coffee and perspiration.

Kankri looks over his shoulder, paranoid that someone would walk in on this private moment of obsession, and rubs the fabric against his cheek. The sensation is familiar and the scent is comforting and every time he has a moment alone like this to indulge he is reminded of his diligence in schoolfeeding. Of pouring his all into memorising a specific something, planting it into his pan to attempt total recall. Karkat needed memorising.

Holding the shirt and inhaling Karkat’s scent gave Kankri a painful clenching feeling in his chest, a compelling heat exuding from his pumper that riddled him with confusion and want.

> _YOU’RE SO UNCOMFORTABLE IN YOUR EMOTIONS._

Karkat had said that to him once and it racked Kankri with awareness. He hadn’t recognised that about himself but it was true. Karkat was incredibly observant. It seemed sometimes he knew more about Kankri than the ghostly troll himself was willing to admit. He relied on Karkat so much. Knowing Karkat had changed him. That change was good, potentially. It would be good as long as Karkat lasted in his afterlife and after that Kankri had no idea how things would be. How anything would be. It doesn’t bear thinking about; an “after Karkat”.

Kankri measured his experiences though now in BK and AK. Before Karkat and After Karkat. He doesn’t like applying a theoretical ‘After After Karkat’. Kankri can’t imagine any sort of sustainable existence then.

Zoning out, lost in nostalgia, Kankri came back to himself only to realise that for the past five minutes he had been staring at an illustration of a well oiled, muscular blue blood, with a poorly concealed bulge boner staring lustfully out from the cover of “Love on the Battlefield”.

This is how Karkat found him when he walked into the respite block.

"I never thought I’d see the day when I’d catch you drifting off at the sight of a boner, but Huulio Raamez can turn even the most prudish of trolls." He smirked, triumphant and amused.

Kankri turned the cover of the book face down, a little huffily, before turning to look up at Karkat. “I can assure you ‘Love on the Battlefield’ occupies the barest inkling of my attention span.”

"What are you doing anyway, making a pile from my collection? Are you getting all conciliatory with your burgeoning sexual awakening?"

"Oh hah hah. Quite witty. I think you’ll find he and I are estranged actually."

"And here I thought someday I’d walk in on the merry sight of you papping that cherry nook."

Kankri wrinkled his nose. “Vulgar.”

"You love it." Karkat replied, before he sat down next to Kankri, looking through the stacks of books. "This looks organised. Please tell me you aren’t making a ‘keep’ pile and a ‘trash’ pile based on syntax and grammar. These are my books you know, if you chuck them I will find you and end you."

"I wouldn’t throw them away." Kankri replies, scandalised.

Karkat looks at him, apparent disbelief etched all over his features.

"I wouldn’t." Kankri stresses. "They can be coasters, or door stoppers. Technically they wouldn’t be trash then."

"Urgh. I don’t want you around my collection. They were in the chest for a reason. I know you’re a neurotic shit, but don’t tidy my stuff when it’s locked away." Karkat scolded, taking the books away from Kankri and stacking them once more in the chest.

Kankri watched him pack them away and was seized by the urge to stop Karkat. He grasped his dancestor’s wrist.

"Wait. Can you tell me, what your favourite one is?" Kankri’s blank eyes seemed to exude some measure of sincerity, an earnest desire to know and so Karkat paused in his packing up to retrieve one well loved paperback from the stack, it’s pages curling back from frequent use.

Karkat passed it over to Kankri to view with a demure sort of shyness that only seemed to surface every once in a pink moon. Like all of Karkat’s rarely seen sides, Kankri lapped it up, intent on not so much memorising the moment as drinking it in.

"Black and Back again had a limited run and I had to all but track the publisher down to their hive to order a copy. I mean, it’s probably not the sort of standard of book you would read. I doubt you’d even like it." His bashful reveal gave way to a sudden swathe of pride. "But it’s quality and I’ve had it for sweeps and this shit is the most romantic fucking thing I’ve ever read so shut up in advance ad infinitum okay?"

Karkat’s fierceness and tenderness at once was so endearing and Kankri watched his face more than he regarded the book.

"May I read this?"

"Wha-? Yeah I mean, sure. If you take it seriously." Karkat narrowed his eyes at Kankri until the other troll nodded solemnly, and then he smiled wide. The smile was very endearing.

Karkat was very endearing, that much Kankri was freely able to admit to himself. But it had taken Karkat to point out that for every thing Kankri took the time to find endearing, it was just another thing in ‘Kankrispeak’ that he was falling for utterly.

And Karkat was exactly that. Endearing.


End file.
